Ian Dickety

Web Developer

About

I'm a 20-something web developer from the Great British Isles – North Kent to be a bit more precise, a stones throw from the glitz and glammer of London Town.

My expertise lie both in front-end and back-end web technologies, with a good amount of design mixed in too, which to the laymen amongst you means I can make a website to any scale and capability you would like.

To the slightly more geeky, I class myself as a full stack LAMP developer. I pride myself on light and clean code, and where necessary apply OOP practices using the MVC architectural pattern. I do however have favouritism for front-end development, and building up slick interfaces which work seamlessly.

Having been coding since a young age, I have a deep knowledge of the web and all that goes with it, and generally have a keen interest in all things technological or digital. Keeping up with the web is a game in itself and I love being challenged to use new tools to make something the best it can be.

I am available for all types of freelance work - so whether you're a small business looking for advice on what the web can do for you, or an agency looking for someone to plug a gap for a while or perhaps you need someone in on a longer term contract, just shout.

Personal Portfolio

Kings Arms Restaurant

This pub-turned-restaurant in my childhood village of Meopham in Kent is a real success story of resillience in an industry which has been in decline for decades.

Having worked here for multiple stints in my teenage years, I instinctively understood the business and evolving clientele which was essential in the presentation of its image to the community.

Having access to the long term analytical dataset enabled me to design around that, and put me in a good position to pitch feature ideas to the owners Jack and Pete.

In the end, we designed for mobile first, and built around a Wordpress frame, making it as easy as possible for them to maintain the ever-changing elements of their business.

The project also spawned its own side-project: the Wordpress plugin Event CLNDR. While looking for a managed event calendar that was sleek and easily maintainable, I wasn't impressed with what I saw, so made my own which I then went on to publish in the Wordpress repository.

Ebbsfleet United Prediction League

A personal project involving my long-time supported home-town football club (currently in the fifth tier of the English football system), this is a fan-focused online game where – surprisingly enough – supporters predict on different aspects of matches the first team play.

Having previously been very close to the football club, at one point being the match day magazine editor on a voluntary basis (learning print-basics on the job and juggling full-time work), this is now my only, more unofficial involvement with the club aside from supporting at home and away games.

In its 11th season in its automated guise, the system brings together around 60 supporters per season accounting for loosely 5% of the club's core support base.

The registration system features an automated email confirmation feature, forgotten password functionality, and the back-end game engine generates the leader board as soon as a match score has been entered.

The system is time-based to enable entries right up to the kick-off whistle, but not a second after.

CRIMP

A specialist rock climbing t-shirt store, Crimp is run by climbing enthusiasts who saw a niche market to hit with their ethically sourced clothing.

Having done a couple of other smaller-scale bespoke e-commerce websites previously, I saw it as a good opportunity to see what else was out there, knowing this was a moderate-size project with more requirements than I’d built previously.

But, after a good amount of time researching off-the-shelf solutions, I saw the majority of the solutions out there were significantly bloated and in one way or another and just not quite suitable for the project in hand. So I went about expanding and neatening my existing code base.

The website is completely self-managed, with add-on features such as integrated newsletter subscriptions, discount code manager and custom delivery rates based on weight and location.

As with any online shop in its infancy, page views and conversions are a gradual process but there are some very encouraging signs built on its solid foundation.

Garden Farm

My clients were making a break for it, leaving their home in the South for a new, slower pace of life in the Peak District. To keep them ticking by, their new farm had holiday bed and breakfasts and a cottage available for rent, and in a competitive market they saw a web-based strategy as a key mover to get them going.

As well as on online presence, we were both well aware that the tourism industry is driven by reviews, and so as well as linking it to their Facebook and Trip Advisor pages, we introduced a guestbook and contact form as prominent features of the site.

Together, we identified that imagery was key, both of the surrounding area and the accommodation itself. We then encapsulated these ideas in a simple but powerful design, keeping the text easy to read given the intended main audience of the website.

Lastly, I outlined the principles of SEO to the client and gave instructions for potential keywords to target in their content, as well as sites to aim for in getting their link published in order to increase their rank in Google. As the site continues to mature, it is now encouraging numerous contact queries a month with a very healthy page hit count, even performing comparatively well in saturated keyword searches.

Cloud To Tube

A personal project, this idea arose after backpacking and having inconsistent access to good internet. I was backing up all my media to my cloud storage provider as standard practice, which in itself would take careful management. Then, I would get round to writing a blog to document my activites to friends and family back home and want to embed a video.

Normally, uploading again to YouTube would only be a minor incovenience, but in this scenario it was a major spanner in the works - one that even more frustrating as I knew the video was already "out there" on a server somewhere.

So I spent a few hours hacking away at what was to become the basis of Cloud To Tube, in order to upload the video directly from - in my case - Dropbox to YouTube, needing no extra bandwidth on the client side.

A botched and slow PHP implementation with a skeleton-like design soon progressed into a slimline Python conversion with a smart interface, although it does need further tweaks and some robustness testing before it's released into the wild to hopefully help others who are in a similar position to me.

Contact Me

Questions, queries, or want to ask me what I thought of the footie last night? Drop me a line below, or you can call me on +44 (0)7753 487896.Thanks, your message has been sent and I'll be in touch ASAP